Is 4rets+tank this easy at 80?

[BrothelMeister]

Currently running 4 Ret pallies and a Prot warrior tank through instances to level, at 28ish, and its amazingly competent and fun.

Is relying for 4 Ret pallies for healing heroics at 80 this viable? My guess is probably not until you're 6k+ Gearscore and not healing anymore anyway, but just curious.

[Kicksome]

It's really easy. I had about 5k gs on my pallies and could do any heroics.

The divine storm and instant flash of light can heal the tank to full no problem.

[kate]

I was using an all paladin team with the rets providing the healing, and I did have some difficulties that were related to my inexperience with the real mechanics of Paladins (and specifically some things that only really work if you're multi-boxing), tactics for some fights, key layouts and a lack of gear.

My tank's GS is 4400 (protection paladin) and my 4x rets are all at about 3300 - I haven't found it "easy" but that was largely because it was a learning experience for me; if I were starting over now, I'd do some things differently and probably not have nearly the trouble I had.

[Multibocks]

I would choose a different tank, maybe a bear since his AoE is more mobile and his buff stacks. Of all my tank I consider my warrior the least fun and requires the most micro managing.

[Mokoi]

I would stay with 5 paladins, for PvP benefits. Or switch one paladin to a DK at 60

[OzPhoenix]

5 Paladins is a very strong combination and a relatively (and I stress relatively) easy way to go into Heroics so long as you accept just a few limitations. One being, that since they're all melee, you'll be susceptible to bosses who do aoe melee damage like whirlwind. The second limitation being that they're much more dependent one having a good weapon than ranged casters are.

Other than that having done both a 1xPaladin,4xShaman team and and a 5xPaladin team, I found the all-Paladin team to be much easier for overcoming the "all-new-80-with-crappy-quest-gear" hump than I did with the Shamans.

[HPAVC]

Other than that having done both a 1xPaladin,4xShaman team and and a 5xPaladin team, I found the all-Paladin team to be much easier for overcoming the "all-new-80-with-crappy-quest-gear" hump than I did with the Shamans.

What is this hump exactly? Where you only need items from frost emblems / raid drops or where you can start doing heroic badge farming trivially?

[Noids]

Running 3 rets, 1 enh sham and feral druid here. As a fresh 80 with 4kGS across the board and 4 or 5 pieces of PvP gear (gotta love honour from PvP levelling) I was able to go straight into heroics and start collecting emblems. Now at 5k GS across the board I do not need to heal other than occasionally for boss fights on ICC 5man or ToC heroics.

I can't recommend the druid highly enough as a tank. I have run a pally and DK tank before who are both now >5.5k GS and the druid feels more durable than the DK and has been much faster and easier to gear up than the pally. Unlike the other tanks, PvP gear is perfect and in some cases BiS for druid tanks so if you do WG quests weekly, 10 x arena matches weekly and the odd BG on weekends, you will have a 45k UBH 32k AR 50% dodge tank in a week or two.

Cheers

[OzPhoenix]

What is this hump exactly? Where you only need items from frost emblems / raid drops or where you can start doing heroic badge farming trivially?

Yeah, the hump I was referring to was when they first hit 80 and they're in trashy questing gear.

However, once you replace some of it with some decent badge gear, they get real easy.

My team is now fully geared in Triumph badges (plus 2 pieces of i264 and an i259) and the last Heroic I ran, Gundrak, put a new speed record for bosses for me when Slad'ran was downed in 23 seconds.

Some may do it even faster than that to be sure, but 23 seconds is, in my book, pretty roflstomp.

[ghonosyph]

Lol yes pally teams are incredibly awesome at higher levels. Near the middle of leveling before you get some key class defining skills it can be a bit rough but it went by so quick when I leveled my pally team. They are hands down the favorite team right now for good reason :)

[lightstriker]

my pally team is at 72. i did DTK a lvl76 dungeon. Down the first boss no problem. I stopped becuase i couldn;t use any of the Lvl 74 drops.

[mikekim]

my pally team is at 72. i did DTK a lvl76 dungeon. Down the first boss no problem. I stopped becuase i couldn;t use any of the Lvl 74 drops.

thats why you have an enchanter on the team - disenchant FTW

[daviddoran]

Man, I think im finally gonna have to make a ret team. Ive always preferred casters, not liking to be limited to being in melee range, but all this hype has to be founded... I already have 1 at 80 and 2 min the mid 60s so im gonna RAF up a couple more and have at it. Probably run with a warrior to 71 then swap to a DK I have sitting around. Man, hardest part about cata is gonna be which team of 80s to lvl to 85 first..... Every other expansion, I was still trying to reach the old cap on my first team...

[OzPhoenix]

Man, I think im finally gonna have to make a ret team. Ive always preferred casters, not liking to be limited to being in melee range, but all this hype has to be founded... I already have 1 at 80 and 2 min the mid 60s so im gonna RAF up a couple more and have at it. Probably run with a warrior to 71 then swap to a DK I have sitting around. Man, hardest part about cata is gonna be which team of 80s to lvl to 85 first..... Every other expansion, I was still trying to reach the old cap on my first team...

Keep in mind they are, in my humble opinion, still quite gear dependent and that goes especially for their weapons. For example, while Shamans can get by with a (relatively) low-quality weapon, it really holds back all-Paladin teams.

On the other side of course, once you do get high-quality weapons they run rampant. Stupidly, I put weapons last, preferring to spend time running Heroics for more badges to replace equipment (and outside of ICC heroics, there's no weapons to be had that exceed the i200 epic craftables you make at 80).

Only after running out of Triumph gear to buy did I run normal PoS for i219 weapons for my team, then Heroic PoS for my Prots i232 and finally now equip all my Rets with the i251 Battered Hilt jobbies (as well as 25 bloody runs getting my i219 prot shield out of Normal HoR... lol).

The difference has been eye-popping with each Ret pulling 6k+ DPS and my Prot around 4K DPS on my last ICC10 rep farming run and completely thrashing Heroics.

If you make an All-Pally team my suggestion is that as soon as you possibly can, farm out Normal PoS for the i219 weapons (both prot and ret drop there). More than any armour piece it'll make the biggest difference.

[EaTCarbS]

Some may do it even faster than that to be sure, but 23 seconds is, in my book, pretty roflstomp.

13 seconds :D

Getting gear on a fresh level 80 seems easier now then when it did back in the beginning of the expansion. I remember reading up all the boss loot lists and deciding what I needed to farm for what - lvl 80 non heroic instances included (hey, that trinket from reg loken was dang good!)

[OzPhoenix]

13 seconds :D

Getting gear on a fresh level 80 seems easier now then when it did back in the beginning of the expansion. I remember reading up all the boss loot lists and deciding what I needed to farm for what - lvl 80 non heroic instances included (hey, that trinket from reg loken was dang good!)

Wow! 13 eh. Damn. I just now got Krik'thir down in 19 seconds, but 13...man, that's fast.

Now I've upgraded all their weapons I might give 'em another go, see what I could do now.

23 was with i219s on all, now the prot is i232 and the rets all i251.

And to the OP, yup, make your loot list. Prioritise it all - but get weapons first I reckon. Even a crappily geared Paladin team should be able to run normal ICC's for the i219 weapons.

[lightstriker]

Keep in mind they are, in my humble opinion, still quite gear dependent and that goes especially for their weapons. For example, while Shamans can get by with a (relatively) low-quality weapon, it really holds back all-Paladin teams.

On the other side of course, once you do get high-quality weapons they run rampant. Stupidly, I put weapons last, preferring to spend time running Heroics for more badges to replace equipment (and outside of ICC heroics, there's no weapons to be had that exceed the i200 epic craftables you make at 80).

Only after running out of Triumph gear to buy did I run normal PoS for i219 weapons for my team, then Heroic PoS for my Prots i232 and finally now equip all my Rets with the i251 Battered Hilt jobbies (as well as 25 bloody runs getting my i219 prot shield out of Normal HoR... lol).

The difference has been eye-popping with each Ret pulling 6k+ DPS and my Prot around 4K DPS on my last ICC10 rep farming run and completely thrashing Heroics.

If you make an All-Pally team my suggestion is that as soon as you possibly can, farm out Normal PoS for the i219 weapons (both prot and ret drop there). More than any armour piece it'll make the biggest difference.

Maybe the weapon was the icing on top of the armor cake. All your Triumphent gear shot up all your stats already.

I ran forge of Souls 3 nights ago at 79. Grean and Blue quest gears, none was over i175 blue. It took all CDs and CCs to take down the mobs. Souladapts were like tanks. One wipe, lost control with the pallys running all over. The first boss just raped me S&M style. It was like he had 5 dildos tether to an electrical cord.

To OP, the first 25 Champion Seals are easier to get since the patch. Start doing the Argent Tournament dailys when you get to 77. Do the Black Knight quest line. Depending on your play time, you should have 25 Seals for a i200 purple when you hit 80.

[ghonosyph]

I think as far as pve is concerned, pallys have gotten quite a bit in beta and it will be lots of fun to pve with them come cataclysm, gear in cata so far in the beta has been a huge jump up by lvl 82. I can't wait till cataclysm now ! :)

[Littleburst]

Wow! 13 eh. Damn. I just now got Krik'thir down in 19 seconds, but 13...man, that's fast.

Fun stuff indeed. Once i while i do my daily HC with a boomkin + me on my 4 shaman in pretty much full wrathfull. Killed final boss in Hall of stone in 10 seconds (with 4x earth ele, fire was on Cd)

I started leveling my ret + dk team again 2 days ago. with boa shoulders/chest it really goes fast. at 65/64 atm. Did ramps/BF/SP/UB so far. Fun going, elites die like they're non elites.

[OzPhoenix]

Fun stuff indeed. Once i while i do my daily HC with a boomkin + me on my 4 shaman in pretty much full wrathfull. Killed final boss in Hall of stone in 10 seconds (with 4x earth ele, fire was on Cd)

I started leveling my ret + dk team again 2 days ago. with boa shoulders/chest it really goes fast. at 65/64 atm. Did ramps/BF/SP/UB so far. Fun going, elites die like they're non elites.

Funny you should mention that, I just did H HoS for the first time. I'd previously been skipping it on the odd occasions because I figured an under-geared team would have trouble on the Brann event in Tribunal of Ages. Decided with my gear now to give it a go. Got the Maiden of Grief achievement (kill <1min), did the Brann event without any trouble and dropped the last guy without even bothering to attend to the adds. Didn't get any time on it from DBM, but it was very quick.

Happily also gave me the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement too.

Under-geared teams I think would still struggle in some places there.

[d0z3rr]

Paladins are good at 80 if your rets have a good 2hander. Otherwise they kinda blow.